How to Make Inexpensive De-Icer For Windshields and Sidewalks

When severely cold or snowy weather strikes, conditions can quickly become dangerous as ice forms on walkways, porch steps, porches, driveways, and car windows. It becomes difficult to even take a step without falling. Thankfully, you can make your own super deicer easily and cheaply.

The downside of commercial deicers

Most commercial deicers for roads, driveways, sidewalks, and porches are primarily salt. They work by what is called freezing-point depression. That is, adding salt to ice lowers the freezing point of the ice, usually by a few degrees. This can cause ice to melt, provided that the temperatures aren’t much below freezing.

Thousands of tons of salt are poured on roads by highway departments every year and many people buy salt-laden deicers for use on their own walks, driveways, and porches.

There are several problems with using salt for deicing. If the temperatures are 10 degrees F below freezing or colder, the salt does no good at all. The salt water will still freeze.

Salt is also corrosive in solution and will gradually destroy concrete, pavement, and painted surfaces. It even eats into metal. If this wasn’t bad enough, the salty water runs off and causes problems in the soil. Most plants are sensitive to excess salt in the soil. The salts can eventually taint the water table, too.

Advantages of homemade super deicer

The homemade super deicer has none of the drawbacks that salt does. It isn’t corrosive or harmful to plant and animal life. It doesn’t taint the water table. It doesn’t harm paint, concrete or road surfaces. In fact, it is so safe that it can be used on windshields and other car windows. The super deicer isn’t even expensive, difficult to make or time-consuming. 

What is this miracle substance? Actually, it isn’t a miracle at all. It has only three ingredients; water, rubbing alcohol, and Dawn dish soap.

Making your own super deicer

To make your own, fill a gallon bottle about three-fourths full of water. An empty milk jug works well. To the water, add 1/4 cup rubbing alcohol and 1/2 tablespoon Dawn soap. Gently stir the mixture. It harms nothing if it makes suds, but it is easier to work with if you keep the suds to a minimum.

Pour the mixture into a clean spray bottle, for use on glass, such as on windshields. You can spray some on while the car is warming up, to help break up the ice and frost. You can even take it with you if you drive somewhere. Be sure to keep it with you rather than leaving it in the car, since even this will freeze if it is allowed to get cold enough, for a long enough time.

The Dawn even leaves a fine soap film on the glass that greatly slows down the formation of frost and ice, subsequent to deicing.

Use on the steps, porches, walkways, and driveways is even more straight-forward. Simply pour it on. Naturally, the larger the surface area, the more of the super deicer you will need.

How it works

Homemade super deicer works in much the same way that salt does; by depressing the freezing-point. Rubbing alcohol in water has a lower freezing-point than even saltwater does, so it works at temperatures that are so low that salt no longer works.

The Dawn soap primarily functions by destroying the surface tension of the water. It is surface tension that causes water to bead up on a freshly waxed surface. With the surface tension gone, the alcohol is free to work directly on the ice, rather than needing to overcome both the temperature and the surface tension.

It is because it breaks the surface tension that the super deicer also greatly slows the formation of frost and ice.

The deicer isn’t harmful to the environment because both the alcohol and the soap break down easily. In fact, Dawn soap is often used for cleaning animals that have been subjected to oil from oil spills.

This is so easy to mix up and it works so well that it is bewildering why people will sometimes go out of their way to purchase products that claim to do the same thing, but which are often more dangerous or harmful to use. It isn’t as expensive as many of those specialty products, either, since in the amounts used, neither the rubbing alcohol or Dawn soap are expensive.

Homemade super deicer is just the thing to mix up when the temperatures take a nose dive and ice begins to make things miserable and treacherous.

Note: I published a very similar homemade recipe for use as a car windshield cleaner. The two recipes can be used interchangeably, though the purpose is different.